Ed Engle: Nelson's Spring Creek, then and now

To the uninitiated it seems logical that the trout rearing ponds adjacent to Montana's Nelson Spring Creek are there to provide the fish to stock it. However, an hour or two spent fishing over trout rising in this famous spring creek quickly disavows you of that notion. If your dry fly presentation and any subsequent mends, modifications or voodoo you use to eliminate drag aren't successful you won't get a strike.

The interesting part is that most of the time the fly really looks like its drifting naturally on the water's surface. A friend of mine describes this kind of fishing as "chess, not checkers." I get that. I also can draw some comparisons between these spring creek trout and those that I've fished on the South Platte River in Cheesman Canyon, although today these fish are a notch or two more difficult than the Cheesman trout.

I'm fishing Nelson's with my friend John Gierach. On the drive up to Montana a few days ago, we figured out that the last time we fished Nelson's Spring Creek together was 24 years ago. We're here today largely because the Madison River was off color yesterday and the wind was horrendous. We saved that day by ducking into a little spring creek on the way back to our motel in Livingston. A berm between it and the nearby Madison River shields it from the wind. It was off color, too, but we used black wooly buggers to land a few small brown trout apiece, and we were glad to catch them.

Advertisement

This short trip to Montana came about when Jim Thull, the special collections librarian at Montana State University, contacted both John and me about the possibility of donating our "papers" to the library's Trout and Salmonid Collection. Jim offered to come to Colorado to pick up the papers, but I thought why not drive them up to the university and fish for a few days before heading home. I hadn't fished Montana in years, and it didn't take much to get John on board.

An added inducement for the road trip was Jim's invitation to hear award-winning author and angling enthusiast Thomas McGuane's 2016 Trout and Salmonoid lecture, also sponsored by the Montana State University Library.

How could you resist going to a lecture titled, "Does Fishing Mean Anything?"

But I digress.

Those trout on Nelson's were just too sophisticated to be stockers and, as it turns out, they aren't. These trout have managed to get into the friendly confines of Nelson's Spring Creek from the nearby Yellowstone River, and I doubt few choose to go back. The spring creek is rich with all sorts of trout foods ranging from generous mayfly, caddisfly and midge hatches to scuds and sowbugs. Apparently, it's the perfect diet for producing large, smart wild trout.

A limited number of fly fishers do pester them on a regular basis with a multitude of fly patterns, which they do on occasion consume, but you earn your trout on Nelson's. Most anglers consider it the most challenging of the three spring creeks in what is rightly known in these parts as Paradise Valley.

John and I are fortunate in more ways than one today. My friends Bill Bush and Doug Albright also happen to be fishing Nelson's today. Doug and Bill were my regular clients on the South Platte River back in my guiding days, until I realized I was learning as much from them as they were learning from me and we just started fishing together. I still meet up with them on their yearly trips to the South Platte. They're regulars at Nelson's now.

After a predictably challenging day on the water during which we all managed to fool a few trout, we headed up to Doug and Bill's room at the lodge where they prepared a great dinner for us.

As easy as it is to say that coming back to Nelson's Spring Creek after 24 years brought me full circle, that's not exactly the case.

When I first fished Nelson's, the trout I managed to catch meant a lot to me because it was the first time I'd fished a spring creek. At the time, I wondered if lessons I'd learned on the South Platte River would hold me in good stead and they did.

I've got a lot more fishing under my belt now, but I was still awed by the spring creek and still grateful to catch trout. Actually, I'm always grateful when I manage to fool a trout with an artificial fly.

It's magic every time I feel that tug.

What has changed is that I throw a better loop now and get better drifts than I did in 1992. I'm not as much of a dawn-to-dark fly fisher as I was back then, either. I like walking and watching streams now and picking the trout I want to go after, but that doesn't mean I can't light the afterburners and fish a full day when trout are rising. The fire is still there, and I hope it never dies out.

So now, on top of everything else, Montana State University will archive my "papers." I don't know what to think about that other than I'm deeply grateful to the university. If there's a lesson here it's that you never know where things will go. In my case I'm glad they led me to the river and trout.

Knights pick up first playoff win since '14BOULDER — This year's Fairview boys basketball team sure is full of surprises.
After losing five of their first eight games, the Knights rebounded to finish the regular season on a 13-2 run and found a way to win the Front Range League regular season championship. Full Story

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story